for young people with chronic illnesses

Rules

The trouble with rules is that they are there even if they don’t seem to be. People create unspoken rules within groups and friendships all the time, and people are hurt when these same unwritten rules are broken, bent, or ignored.

Beware the group that claims to have no rules. Accountability might be something else they lack.

Sometimes something only becomes an explicit rule when someone breaks an implicit one, or violates an expectation. Don’t draw on the walls was never a rule in our house growing up, for example, because my brother and I never did this. It was a rule for the family next-door.

Making rules clear as clear as possible from the start means that everybody is on the same page, but because we all have certain expectations we don’t always realise that needs to be an explicit rule until some stress or imbalance occurs.

I now realise that in the beginning I didn’t enforce rules as I should and that caused “leaks” later on. As the group has gone on, we’ve realised that there needs to be clearer rules and direction. They need to be enforced in order for the group to work well. This is especially true if we want to achieve certain goals for the group as they involve more organising and structure to achieve.

You can find all the group rules here. Explanations haven’t been provided for all of the rules, but there are important reasons for each of them.